The World Premiere of Alice in Black and White in Louisville: An Interview with Playwright Robin Rice Lichtig and Looking for Lilith’s Artistic Director Shannon Woolley

New York playwright Robin Rice Lichtig is in town,
as her new play Alice in Black and White
is set to have its world premiere at Louisville’s Looking for Lilith Theatre
Company. The play is about 19th century photographer Alice Austen. I
sat down with Robin and Lilith’s artistic director Shannon Woolley to talk
about the play and its inspiration.

Arts
Louisville: Your new play Alice
in Black and White is premiering at Looking for Lilith. Where did you get the
idea for this play?

Robin
Rice Lichtig: I live in New York City and I was on a hike in
Staten Island and I discovered this Alice Austen Historic House. It turns out
that it was the house of a woman who became a photographer back in the late
1800s. This was before photography was easy. It wasn’t digital ,and women
definitely didn’t do it because it was a tremendous amount of equipment. Alice,
at age ten, became fascinated by photography. Her photos are in the house.

AL:What drew you to her?

RRL: I became
fascinated with her not only because she was obviously an extremely strong
woman to have taken up photography, but she also lived her life the way women
weren’t supposed to then. She didn’t get married, which meant that she didn’t
have the financial security. She lived her life on her own terms and it wasn’t
easy. If the story weren’t true, it would be like a melodrama. The fact is, it’s
true and so, it’s quite amazing!

RW: Do you
focus on her entire life, or just a part of it?

RRL: It’s
about her life starting at age ten, right up almost until the end. There is a
parallel story that takes place in 1952 of a gentleman who edited a book in
1952 with Alice Austen photos in it. So his story, and it’s kind of a love story,
is paralleling Alice’s. They see each other across time because they both have
this intense interest in common. Eventually her story moves forward in time and
his does not. Eventually the stories meet.

Shannon
Woolley: The structure of the play operates like turning the pages of a photo
album, the way it moves slowly toward the climax.

RRL: The
scenes are definitely lifted from the photographs.

RW: How did
you, Robin, become acquainted with Looking for Lilith?

RRL: As a
playwright, I’ve come down to Humana five or six times. I know Louisville and I
know a couple of people who are playwrights. Kathi Ellis, the director, is a friend
of one of those people. Kathi and I have known each other for a few years.

SW: About
four or five years ago, Kathi was directing a show for Looking for Lilith
called Fabric Flames and Fervor: Girls of
the Triangle. Robin was in town for the Humana Festival and came to see the
show. She thought Looking for Lilith’s style of working really works with the
way that she writes. Robin said, "I’ve got this great script, let’s look at
it."

RW:You must have responded well to her
work then?

SW: When we
read Alice in Black and White, it was
like, "Oh, this is a Lilith story." The woman speaking to us from history and the
fact that two of the characters literally speak to each other across the time
and space continuum was something that interested us. There’s also a lot about
Robin’s writing that lends itself to movement and physical representation,
which is something that Looking for Lilith does a lot of.It just turned out to be a great
partnership.

RRL: The
first rehearsal I went to, the actors started doing the very Lilith stylized
movement and a chill went up my spine. I just loved it. I mean this is totally
what I want and it completes the action – it belongs there.

SW:We’re also using period cameras and
they are a character in the play. The first rehearsal that Robin came to was
also when we were first putting the cameras together with the talking and the
moving.

RRL:I mean it’s very physically demanding to
put the cameras together. The actors are doing an amazing job. I didn’t realize
what a difficult job I gave them.

SW: And
they’re so beautiful, the cameras: brass, wood, and building materials that we
don’t see all the time.

RRL: I can
see where Alice would have not only been in love with taking photographs, but with
that equipment. I was an artist before I started writing plays. I built my own
silk screen, and I loved that screen. It was almost like a child. I took it
everywhere with me. She felt the same about her cameras.

SW: It’s a
tactile physical relationship that she’s got with them.

RW: Did you
both do a lot of research to get this going?

RRL: The actors
did, one of the men, and we should say we have two men in this play.Lilith has never had men on stage
before; I’m honored.

SW: We never
had adult men. This is the first time we’ve had grown men, and it’s really
wonderful.

RRL: I didn’t
want to do too much research, though. There is a danger when you’re writing a
play of over-researching. You’ll see plays where you can tell the writer did a
lot of research and then couldn’t put it aside to make the play dramatic. What
you also have to watch out for is if there are still living relatives who might
have trouble. I’m okay with Alice Austen. I was a little iffy about the 1952
guy.

SW: This is
a somewhat new experience for Lilith because a lot of the plays that we create
with the company are based on oral history. You always have the experience at
some point during the run of the play where you look out in the audience and
the person whose words you’re saying is sitting out there. It’s a jolting
moment.

RW: Do you work
really closely together on this project?

RRL: I just
came to two run-throughs. At this point, I’m just sitting back because it’s way
past me having anything to say about it. We made a couple of little tweaks. That’s
really it.

SW:It seems to me like our vision for
realizing the story meshes pretty well with the words.

RW: Is this
different from your other work, Robin?

RRL: I would
say the sensibility is not different. They all have a musicality. Some are much
less realistic. This is fairly realistic for me. Not like my play Frontier where the main character is an
Alaskan wolf. I choose subjects that that I want to know more about.

RW: Do you
relate deeply to Alice’s character?

RRL: Oh, yeah.
I relate to her artistic passion and her stubbornness.

RW: Would
you work together again on another piece?

RRL: I have
some plays that I think would work for Lilith.

SW: This has
been a really great process.

RRL:I would love to workshop a piece at
Looking for Lilith and be there when the actors came up with the movement. I
just love that. I eat it up!

Alice in Black and White

by
Robin Rice Lichtig

Directed
by Kathi E.B. Ellis

7:30
p.m. on February 28, March 1, 2, 7, 8 and 9, with a 2 p.m. matinee on March 9 as well.

For
reservations, call The Kentucky Center for the Arts Box Office at 502-584-7777
or 1-800-775-7777 or go to www.kentuckycenter.org.

Adult
tickets will be $18. Student and senior tickets will be $15. LFL continues
their new community night initiative on Monday, March 4, with ticket prices of
$10.

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